Science and technology

Military robots

Trucking all over the world

THE automation of driving is proceeding apace—to the point where some American states now allow robot vehicles (with human drivers on board in case anything goes wrong) to be tested on public roads. But armies, too, are interested in automatic automobiles. Anything that preserves soldiers’ lives is welcome, and that is particularly so when they might lose those lives not in the heat of battle but in the humdrum business of delivering supplies.

Military drivers, though, have to deal with problems beyond those that make civilian driving hazardous. The average commute or school-run, even in the most dangerous parts of an American city, is rarely subject to booby traps, ambuscades or attack by rocket-propelled grenades. Nor, despite the macho, four-wheel-driveness of suburban sports-utility vehicles, do most such trucks spend much time off-road in the way that an army truck is likely to. The problem of automating military vehicles, then, is a hard one. But Oshkosh Defense, a firm based in Wisconsin, is having a go.

Working in collaboration with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, in Quantico, Virginia, Oshkosh has fitted its standard military truck, the medium tactical vehicle replacement, or MTVR, with a piece of kit it calls TerraMax unmanned ground vehicle technology. If it works, TerraMax will make the job of delivering supplies much safer.

TerraMax uses radar and LIDAR (which stands for light detection and ranging, and involves the use of laser beams to measure the vehicle’s distance from other objects). Together, these sensors create a map of the truck’s surroundings. This map incorporates not only the gradient of the land being crossed but also the nature of the vegetation surrounding the vehicle, and even the thickness of dust swirling in the air. The sensors are able, too, to identify obstacles based on their size and speed—people, for example, are unlikely to be moving at 100km per hour.

All these data are fed through a computer programmed with the truck’s anticipated route. That route can, however, be changed if the system deems it desirable. Other vehicles, and also people, are to be avoided—as are large rocks. Dust and brushy vegetation, not themselves obstacles, might conceal trouble, and so should be approached with caution.

So far the TerraMax-equipped trucks have fared well in trials, including a test earlier this year at Fort Pickett, Virginia. Two of them were placed in convoy with six manned vehicles. For around five days the convoy was subjected to various challenges, including roadside bombs and small-arms fire, but it travelled only slightly slower than a manned convoy would have done—and that, according to Captain Warren Watts, who was in charge of the test, was because of the troops’ unfamiliarity with the system, rather than any inherent defect in TerraMax.

Captain Watts, clearly a cautious man, reckons it might take a decade or more for autonomous trucks to be fully integrated into America’s armed forces, but if TerraMax, or something like it, proves successful then the pressure will be on to use it much sooner than that. Half of the coalition troops killed in Afghanistan last year were the victims of roadside bombs. Automating the process of supply would cut that number significantly.

This is great news. The first vehicle in a patrol should be unmanned and all supply convoys. IEDs are instantly (mostly) obsoleted. Send a few drones off to kill anyone who attacks or ambushes the unmanned convoy - no risk of friendly fire where insurgents are looting. No more soldiers in body bags being used as political pressure. Another step in the right direction, and another step towards the (never quite achievable) casualty free asymmetric warfare.

It's kind of weird that this article does not mention the DARPA Grand Challenge, which directly led to the creation of Terramax and was specifically designed to create the technology for driverless vehicles.

Highly responsive vehicles-- having greater mobility and responsiveness than a clunky human can operate-- will fare better in asymmetrical warfare with organic speed opponents.

Appearances to the contrary, the military tends to fight the last war and logistics tends to be the last part of the last war to receive an upgrade (Germany in WWII used millions of horses for logistics purposes; America now putters along with decades old vehicles although, as noted, that may finally change).

The author may be interested to delve beyond just the vehicle, and examine coming changes to military logistics.

"Half of the coalition troops killed in Afghanistan last year were the victims of roadside bombs. Automating the process of supply would cut that number significantly."

Anything that reduces the likelihood of troop casualties will increase the likelihood of the US & UK commencing conflicts in other people's countries - where they have no business being.
Public outrage / pressure in the US & UK against the un-necessary deaths of "our boys" is one of the few restraining factors on gung-ho politicians.

it strikes me that an un-manned supply truck is actually a large box full of neat stuff that can be purloined by anyone brave enough to get on it. it's not going to be too difficult to catch one surely...A big ditch across the road dug while the diggers are under a foil canopy should be enough...

My God!
That's the last time I ever make a light hearted comment in The Economist!!
I understood perfectly your point, however the wording of your original post did lend itself to such a comment as mine, which I still think was quite amusing.
PS Whilst Mrs Thatcher may well have spoken to you after the Falklands War,did Tony say anything to you after the Iraq war, because I will certainly remember him for that.

The thought or robot-driven logistics vehicles opens a book-full of questions on issues driving the need for war,and how to fight one. In the pas, megalomaniacs fought wars to secure growing lands, women, minerals, petroleum, barriers of protection, and other vitally important assets to expand maintain their power, wealth or superiority. A thousand anecdotes will cover the waterfront of knowledge and summary of whether or not it is a good idea. history is full of examples of the improvements of science and technology sometimes proves that wars can be won with superior weaponry and supply logistics. Nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers replaced galleon ships. B-52 and C-5 Galaxy aircraft replaced carrier pigeons. and satellite telecommunications replaced the lowly walkie-talkie sped up signals to the front that helped America win WWII.

The poor Germans relied on land-lines from Normandy to Berlin, while America could see its enemy over the bunkers and hills relaying radio transceiver messages back and forth in minutes. Its replacement, the cell phone, went between 1990 to 2011, worldwide use from 12.4 million to over 6 billion, penetrating about 87% of the global population and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid. They are even used to detonate bombs.

The use of pack-horses moved onto the internal combustion engine.

It seems most strange that military hardware providers rarely take a look backward at what worked the best over time. The problem with that exposes the reason they invent, manufacture and deploy them in the first place. It is not to win a war, but to fill their pockets. Obsolete and worthless artillery fill thousands of supply caches the world over, and will never b used, along with all the left hanbd monkey wrenches bought by Pentagons the world over.

It seems only now that the excessive overruns on cost of the F-35 are causing dozens of air forces o rethink the fact that fighter aircraft invented twenty years ago flew faster, with more stealth and firepower than the lumbering Lockheed invention whose only victim is the taxpayer.

When added up, man spends more money on warfare than on education. The Swiss, who have never fought a serious war (except amongst themselves) to defend or grab neighbouring teritory or resources, are armed to the teeth. their "Boy Scout" military has to train with the US or fight wars as mercenaries to get any battle time, yet they possess nuclear arms, F/A-18 Hornets, F-5 Tigers and some of the most sophisticated telecommunications imagery and surveillance on the planet. Yet Italian trucks can find back-country mountain roads (even the Simplon Pass) to smuggle in tobacco and drugs every day. It makes a mockery of their Defenses.

What about the empty skies? Has no one considered the slow lumbering hybrid air vehicles that combine the values of a 200 kph aircraft, a helicopter, hovercraft and dirigible to deliver loads of 500 tons over mountain, sea and desert terrain, above the clouds without the need of airports or pilots? http://www.hybridairvehicles).

They are not science fiction and have no hydrogen (as in Led Zeppelin or von Hindenberg. The skies are empty folks, wake up. From above, all one sees of the Earth these days are snaking trails of millions of trucks and cars recklessly careening along narrow slits of concrete or tarmac, often crashing into each other, or being blown up by roadside bombs. They deliver their goods at half the cost of conventional aircraft and a quarter the cost of helicopters.

Who will accept the medals when any war is won, driver-less trucks? Which begs the question, why are wars fought in the first place. Did someone ever extract a profit for Afghanistan where the Brits, Russians, Americans and now NATO forces fought wars since the 1800's? Did anyone profit out of Kuwait or Iraq, Korea or Kosovo, Vietnam or Grenada? It seems we are best friends and trading partners with the Germans and French now in spite of fighting them for most of the 17th-20th Centuries.

Margaret Thatcher told me on the day she declared war on the Falklands that the only reason she did so was "because no British Prime Minister was remembered unless he started a war". It wasn't necessary to make it pay for itself. It never does. In America, as in most countries, it is simply big business.

Western civilization is based on fear so constantly discovering new and new devices to protect themselves.They are so blind to protect themselves they are digging their own tomb.I am 100 p.c. sure if world will be destroy in near future western civilization is mainly responsible for that.Without any reason they invented nuclear bombs and murdered millions of innocent people of Japan. Recently they invented drone aro plain and killing innocent Afghan and Pakistani people.In Iraq war they used robot murdered thousand innocent people. Recently news published that America want to destroy moon using nuclear weapon.I really wonder why this suicidal tendency so strong in white people and why not most thinker not opposing them?

An unfortunate side effect of automating vehicles is that it makes the decision of whether or not to go to war much easier to make on the side of war. The fear of casualties is part of what political leaders have to take into account when making this kind of decision. If that fear is reduced, or eliminated, it's much easier to decide to fight.

This is a perceptive comment. Wars are won or lost because of an army's logistic capabilities. And Germany's antiquated supply technology in World War II is clear proof. A large and formidable German army group found itself at the outskirts of Moscow, unable to press an assault for lack of sufficient munitions and fuel. Today is no different in that armies continue to use logistics technologies that have evolved little since the Korean conflict, when helicopters were first used to supply remote outlying bases.

Blair fell from grace the minute he supported Bush in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars without the support of either Parliament or the majority of the British voting public.

It was the same with Bush in America. The Canadians and most of Europeans stayed out of Bush's appalling vengeance war in Iraq, which resolved nothing but got even with Saddam for attempting to kill his father one day on arrival in Kuwait when a SAM missile narrowly missed the tail of his private jet upon landing. Most of Iraqi oil still flows to China and other long-term contractual partners.

Blair will certainly be remembered thus but not for any good he did in Britain or elsewhere. I never met him in person but we crossed paths in South Sudan recently. He was trying to find a solution to the continuation of a 40 year civil war in the 20th Century which started over 100 years ago when Britain gave Khartoum the power over the minority poor, uneducated and disparate black Christians in the South, enslaving them for another 100 years and costing 2 million lives in the process.

Some day, politicians will lower their egotistical desires for longevity and greatness, climb out of their ivory towers and look to see the massive damage they inflict on innocent lives, before they engage in more wars or creating frivolous borders that seriously distort life and limb.

I was mocking Thatcher with my comment. She knew better than to pick a war on Argentina (an erstwhile ally on many fronts, including polo) over a few acres of sheep runs. That could have been easily avoided through diplomatic channels, or simply waiting out the political machismo of Argentina's brutal military administration (circa 1980-85).

Instead she chose to go to war over a questionable and ridiculous issue of feigned sovereignty (which most thinking Argentinians did not accept from their government either) over some tiny islands that mean next to nothing to either the Argentinian or British peoples, economies or militaries, only perhaps to the various people of both ancestries who live there.

Similarly, a simple socio-economic-ethnic understanding of not mixing a crucial imbalance of powerful Northern Muslim Arabs with poor, illiterate Black Southern Christians would have staved off a lot of subsequent bloodshed and violence.

But short-term political gain without doing their due diligence and homework, or allowing the CIA, diplomats and MI5 to get it wrong all the time, doth make fools of them all.